Dentelle Rose
by ohtobealady
Summary: very short drabble series on the makings of a family (from tumblr, as I'm archiving linear drabbles) *cover image art by Anna Eliza Hardy*
1. Anger

She shouldn't have said that. She shouldn't have said those things to Cora, not like that. Not in front of the rest of the family. He watched as Cora's soft, pretty features grew hard and cold before she lifted herself from the sofa and with rustling skirts stormed upstairs.

He knew he should follow her. Robert walked quietly and cautiously into Cora's room, clicking the door open to find his wife lying sprawled onto her bed, her face buried in a pillow. He took a breath in and slowly, very slowly, exhaled. Comforting her wasn't one of his strengths.

He entered the room with an "Oh, oh my dear…" and sat next to her on the bed. He put his hand gingerly on her back, the boning of her corset hard beneath his fingers. He offered the first of his assuagements. "Don't cry."

She didn't move. The lack of response put him off and he sat dumbly, but sympathetically, on the edge of her bed, his fingers still on her back. He tried again.

"It'll happen soon, I'm sure," he spoke as softly as he could, hiding his own fears beneath his calm exterior. "Mama is only anxious for an heir, but we're still quite young." He swallowed his doubt here, but continued. "I'm sure we'll have one eventually. Please don't cry, dearest."

Cora shook her head within the pillow and stilled. She mumbled something into the feathers and he struggled to make it out. "What's that?" He asked her, leaning down to hear her better.

She sat up with a jerk. "I'm NOT crying!"

Robert nearly fell off of the bed when she pushed past him, "Oh, I-" he fumbled for words when he saw the expression on Cora's face, one so very different from what he expected.

"She needs to stay out of it!" she yelled.

"Cora, she's part of our family. She only wants what we all want."

"But she is not a part of our marriage! This entire year has been about her hounding and hounding!"

"I quite agree, but-"

"Honestly! 'If only the American would give us a grandchild!'" Cora shouted in a rather clever impersonation of his mother's voice. He had to suppress a laugh. "What is that supposed to mean? Does she think I'm deliberately refusing to have a baby? Does she think I'm deliberately refusing you?"

Robert stumbled over some additional words, but he knew she wouldn't hear them. Not when she was this angry. "I'm not certain, but Cora-"

She balled her slender and delicate hands into hard fists. "She had the audacity to remind me that it wasn't a sin, 'now that we're married…' It's remarks like that. What kind of a girl does she take me for?"

"Cora-"

"Do you know what she asked me? Hmm?" Her eyes were something fiercely blue, wide with indignation.

He shook his head.

"If anything I've done in the past may be preventing conception! She suggests I see the doctor!"

Robert blinked. "Well…it's an understandable concern, dearest, and I'm sure she means well-"

"What?" Her voice was low and sharp, the question terse. At last she had heard him, but apparently what he said had been wrong. He tried to backpedal.

"I just mean, it can't hurt to…"

"You agree with her?" Cora stood straight and tall, her brows lowered and daring.

He didn't know what to say, what to do. Certainly his mother was rather harsh in how she handled things, but perhaps something was wrong! Not that it would be Cora's fault. Not that any of this was her fault, but perhaps…

"The doctor may be able to tell us if there is something that we should know, something we can do differently-"

Cora didn't let him finish. She didn't let him explain. "I'm tired." She said flatly. "Please leave." His mouth slacked open.

"Cora, darling…"

But she repeated herself, cooly, clearly, slowly, precisely. "Please leave."

"I-"

His breath hitched as her face grew more severe and reluctantly he left her room, slipping out into the dark hallway.


	2. Despair

Restless. Completely restless. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, he surrendered. Although Cora was angry, he couldn't fall asleep without her by his side.

He crept to the diving door and, after gathering courage, opened it slowly but resolutely.

"Cora?" He called tentatively into the dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did he studied his wife's sleeping form in her, or rather what had now become their, bed.

He moved into the room and closed the door silently behind him. Folding himself neatly within the covers, he let out a tired sigh and closed his eyes. Sleep was finally within reach. But soon, it had fluttered away from him once again.

"Do you think she's right?"

Robert opened his eyes to the soft sound of Cora's voice.

He turned his head to her. The whites of her eyes glistened in the moonlight.

"What?"

"Do you think I should see the doctor? The one in London." The question was whispered, defeated, and sad. The weight of it heavy on his heart.

He rolled to his side and faced her. He didn't answer for a time. He couldn't. The fear in her voice matched his own and the words wouldn't form in his throat without the crack of doubt. The despair in the air was palpable and suffocating. He could feel the hope that she so ardently wore was now completely stripped away from her, and it was unsettling.

"Only if you want," he managed. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to say he would as well. After all, it shouldn't take young couples over a year to conceive. They shouldn't have had fourteen months of disappointment. Not when they had been trying. Really and truly trying. Desperately trying.

He heard her push out a breath and watched as she rolled onto her back. Her chest rose and fell. "I feel so useless."

He picked up his head and stared at her. He was incredulous. "What?"

She shook her head as she stared at the canopy of their bed. "What use am I to you? You would have done better with a nice English girl."

The emotion came to him at once. He had no time to check himself. He sat up suddenly, and glared down at her. "Stop. Do not say that. Don't ever say that again. Do you understand me?"

The look on her face was shock first and foremost. Pure shock from the harshness of his voice. And then he saw the tears.

"Oh, Robert."

He leaned down over her and then atop of her, kissing her over and over.

"No," she pulled away. "I can't think about babies right now…please…"

He shook his head against her. "This isn't about babies."

She stilled and furrowed her brows.

He continued in a deep and steady voice. "I want to make love to you. Let me." The desire dripped from his words.

She pulled in several breaths before he saw her nod. She moaned against his mouth as his lips met hers again and she opened her legs to him. In a blur, they were soon skin to skin, sweaty and moving slowly, but ardently, against one another. Neither spoke, the only sounds made were the breaths and moans and sweet gasps in the heated darkness.

He caught her gaze as he moved within her and it excited him. With quickening movements he stared into her eyes, the blue of them warm with pleasure. When she whimpered with a trembling lip, her hands pulling him closer, her eyes still locked with his, he knew he couldn't resist anymore.

"I love you. I love you." He growled against her neck as he spilled inside of her, her soft legs wrapped around his middle.

"Oh Robert, my love," was her reply, the earlier despair completely evaporated from her voice and replaced by the fire within her heart.


	3. Joy

The ledgers were piled high and he rubbed his eyes as he opened the next one. The numbers were all beginning to blur together and he had to keep a small tally of the figures on a scrap of paper near his right hand.

"Robert?" It was Cora, but he couldn't stop now. Not in the middle of counting. He held up a hand to her behind him, and she waited. He wrote down the last number and pulled the next ledger onto the desktop.

"Robert?"

He hummed in feign attention, but he studied the next column of numbers instead, his back still to her.

He could faintly hear her take one step closer and swallow in the quiet of the library.

"Robert, I think I'm pregnant."

Blank. His mind went totally blank and he held his pen still in his hand, his eyes resting on the numbers that now made no sense to him. He turned slowly in his chair to see her. She stood there, in her navy dress, her hands by her side.

"Wh-what?"

"I think I'm pregnant," she repeated. When he did not respond and only stared at her, his mouth agape, she began to pour out an explanation. "I'm more than a month overdue for…well…and, and the smell of eggs makes my stomach turn, and I've been so tired, and…well now…I've, I've just been sick."

He studied her, not knowing what to say, so he just opened and closed his mouth.

"I think I'm pregnant," she said again, but now with a smile that grew and grew. "I'm…I'm pregnant."

He didn't even realize until he was holding her in his arms that he had stood up. He was laughing, kissing her, holding her face in her hands. "Oh my darling. My sweet Cora."

She was nodding, tears shimmering in her sparkling eyes. "We should summon the doctor, of course, but…but I'm sure of it. Robert. I'm pregnant."

His cheeks felt sore from how zealously he smiled. His heart wouldn't still. He wanted to lift her and spin her around, but found that he suddenly had the urge to wrap her up in silken linens and pamper her.

"We're having a baby," his voice sounded strange, the joy in his chest bubbling to the surface. "My darling, a baby."

She laughed out loud and he pulled her to him again, tightly, and blinked away the tears he felt brimming his eyes. "A baby. A baby."


End file.
